Geopolitics

China and Japan’s postwar truce has always been an uneasy one – and if Washington cools its support for Tokyo, the dynamics in the region could shift dangerously. By Richard McGregor<p>For news out of east Asia, it is difficult to compete with North Korea’s youthful, jocular despot, Kim Jong-un, and …

The United States has several thousand operational nuclear missiles. It has a large fleet of strategic bombers, an enormous navy, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and marines. The US could bomb, blockade, and invade North Korea if it chose to incur the cost.<p>Yet North Korea is threatening to …

Secretary James Mattis has been heralded as a "warrior monk" for his prodigious knowledge and voracious reading habits.<p>But Mattis, a retired Marine general, is not the only US military officer who has supplemented his martial knowledge with academic achievement.<p>In that spirit, the US Army has …

The more stridently Trump says he is going to stop North Korea, the worse it looks when he fails, and the more Beijing stands to gain.<p>CANBERRA, Australia — Rivalry between great powers is plainly escalating in many parts of the world. When that happens, specific local issues often take on a much …

The narrative about North Korea, a narrative I believe to be true and have since early March, is simple: The North Koreans have reached a point in their nuclear and missile programswhere they could soon have the capability to strike the United States. The U.S. isn’t prepared to let itself be …

Much of the culture and politics of the 20th century were defined by fear. In the early 1900s, Americans found themselves caught in the middle of a Euro-centric war that cost the lives of millions of people. In the mid-1900s, Nazis ravaged Europe, the Japanese enslaved much of Asia, and Americans …